


Safe Again

by ValmureEld



Series: Vita est in Sanguinem [1]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Angst, Broken Heart, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Grief, Heartbeats, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Platonic Cuddling, Plothole Fill, Romance, fill in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-04-21 01:04:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14273577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ValmureEld/pseuds/ValmureEld
Summary: After weeks of stress trying to find her, Geralt can't trust his senses anymore in that shack on a misty island when he holds his daughter's body in his arms. His heart has well and truly broken, but Ciri refuses to let their reunion be anything other than a happy one.Missing scene and sort of prompt fill for Ciri and Geral's moment together after she wakes up.EDIT: Now with more chapters dealing with the stress Geralt was under during various points in the Hunt timeline.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The first chapter of this fic corresponds with BlueNeutrino's "Lullaby" in her "Heart of a Witcher" series.

The first thing Ciri hears when she wakes up is Geralt’s breathing. 

It sounds wrong. It is strained, choked, a tight, unevenness to the sound that makes it painful to listen to. She draws her arms around him and that breathing stops entirely, and she picks her head up, feeling him tense so suddenly it feels like a shudder. 

“Geralt?” she says, and pulls back enough that she can see his eyes. He’s staring at her, and the grief still hanging on him tempers his joy and surprise. It’s like he’s afraid to believe this is real, and she’s startled and upset to see tears in his eyes. 

“Ciri--” his voice is harsh and he can barely get her name out, and now the strain in his breathing makes complete sense. Ciri cradles his face, her brow twisting with upset and guilt, and she shakes her head.

“Geralt no, I’m so sorry I had to find you--I’ve learned so much and I worried with you coming to the island I just...I dreamed of you, Geralt. I dreamed of you so often. So many ways so many things that could go wrong I just had to find you…” she trails off, breathless, conscious she’s not making a lot of sense. Conscious even more painfully that Geralt can’t quite hear her. 

It’s been a long time since she’s seen him look this lost, this hurt, and it scares her. He’s in some kind of shock, and when he closes his eyes and swallows compulsively a new concern sparks in her chest and she’s immediately pressing her hands to him, searching for what must be causing his pain.

“Where were you injured, Geralt let me see I can help--” she says, trying to control the desperation in her voice. She is looking at his armored chest, seeing nothing, and yet trapped suddenly in the memories of Rivia. The last time she’d seen him, after all, he’d been laying in a pool of his own blood, white hair spread on the flagstones. She’d taken him and Yennefer, made sure they were safe before leaving,, but the image of him laying serene and bandaged in Yennefer’s lap is not so vivid as the dying had been. 

Even after facing it, she can’t stop fearing his death. Especially after. 

“Not, not injured,” he says roughly, shaking his head and clasping at her hands to stop her. She doesn’t believe him though. There’s too much pain in his eyes. Too many signs in the posture she still remembers so well. Geralt may think he’s good at hiding his state, but she’s always been able to read him. She knows something is wrong. 

“Don’t lie to me Geralt, I can see you’re in pain! Don’t you think you’ve risked enough? I won’t watch you...” she stops, grinding her jaw angrily, blinking away equally angry tears. “I won’t watch you bleed out again,” she says at last, her voice far harsher, far more accusing than she’d intended. Geralt swallows again, but his gold eyes are locked on her, as though he’s afraid even to blink. A small, broken smile ends up cracking his stricken expression and he shakes his head again. 

“I’m not lying...I--Ciri….” 

Something is broken, she can tell, and it’s only when a look of discomfort again crosses his face and he breathes out a long, unsteady breath with one hand pressed to his chest that she realizes what. Fear shoots through her and she quickly pulls away from him, shaking her head.

“Your heart...Geralt--” she’s nearly breathless, her voice mournful. She’s staring at his hand pressing against his breastplate, staring at the injury she knows must still linger. She’s had this dream before. Dreamed that she’d only bought him a little time. Dreamed that fate would get weary of waiting and death would return in the quiet moments and silence him again. 

“Ciri please, listen to me,” Geralt says, and she clenches her jaw, looking up at him again. His hand has moved from his heart to rest on her neck instead, his other hand coming up to cradle her face. For a split second she hates him, because here he is again attending to her and ignoring himself, as if that’s what she needs. As if she doesn’t need him to be alright more than anything right then. 

“No, Geralt, let me look. Just, let’ me--” 

His expression is sad, his brow furrowed, but he doesn’t stop her as she makes quick work of the buckles on his breastplate. He just watches her. 

In a few moments she has his armor open, and her throat closes up. Her fingers are trembling as she brushes the place his heart resides, brushes his shirt aside to reveal the ugly pucker left behind by the weapon that killed him. There is no injury now that she can see, and so if there is something wounded inside there’s nothing she can do for him. 

She surprises herself with a pitiful groan in the back of her throat and she blinks a hot tear down into her scar. 

“Geralt, I’m so...I’m so sorry,” she sobs, flattening her hand against his chest and leaning into him, resting her forehead against his collarbone. His arms come up to hug her tight, and she feels him shake his head against her.

“No, Ciri, no,” he says, and his tone is so sad it only makes her feel worse. “You have nothing to be sorry for. It should never have taken me this long to find you.”

His heart is beating too hard, and too fast, and it’s scaring her how different it feels. Her brow twists and she tucks her head into his chest, laying her ear in the exact place it used to rest when she was very small and couldn’t sleep. She remembers with a pang the long silences between rich, steady beats and her fingers curl in his shirt. 

The sound now is wrong, and she feels magic prickle around her as she wishes fervently she could reach inside him and smooth away the damage. Restore that steady strength. The way his heart is beating now, she can hear far too much mortality in the sound and she’s genuinely afraid she may yet hear him die. 

Nothing about Geralt had ever been unsteady, and now everything is. His strong, carefully trained muscles tremble. His breathing is ragged, his touch fleeting like he expects her to dissolve and for him to wake up. 

His heartbeat is unstable, fluttering, and she wonders that it can sustain him at all. She opens her eyes and keeps her head pressed desperately to his chest, settling her hand next to it and stroking gently, like his heart is a panicked animal she can calm. 

He sags against the wall and rests his hand against her back, and she feels his tension bleed away with a bone-weary sigh. He lays like that, and just lets her listen.

She’s afraid. Afraid to move her head away, afraid not to. She has this desperate idea that if she’s listening his heart can’t stop, because he can’t do that to her. Not again. 

“Geralt, what’s happened?” she asks pitifully, stroking her hand down his shirt again, desperate to soothe him. Desperate to steady that painful sound. 

“I thought I lost you, Ciri. I thought I lost you for good.”

His voice is so broken she flinches and looks up, meeting his eyes. She doesn’t dare move her hand from his chest, but she sits up, reaching the other up and stroking his cheek.

“Oh Geralt, I’ve missed you so,” she says softly, drawing their foreheads together and tangling her fingers in his hair. “I’ve done this to you, haven’t I?” she asks, stroking her thumb against his heart. “I’ve wounded you so deeply…”

“Not you, Ciri. Never you.”

She closes her eyes again, and they are silent for a while.

His heart gradually slows under her touch, and his breathing deepens. His trembling has stopped, and his posture radiates weariness. Ciri opens her eyes again, but she doesn’t move from his sternum. She traces her fingers reverently across his chest once more, listening to the thud-thud of another weary beat, and she imagines dappled sunlight across their bodies.

“You can sleep,” she says softly. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t stop.” 

She flattens her hand against his breast and feels him huff the weak, stillborn remains of a laugh. 

“Alright. Just for a few minutes,’ he murmurs, his hand tightening on her shoulder where it rests.

“I won’t go anywhere,” she assures. “I promise you that, Geralt. I will be exactly here when you wake again.

He shuffles, shifts to lay down where she’d just been, and she settles in next to him, listening carefully as promised. He falls asleep almost immediately, and after a few minutes she can hear the strain ease. The fluttering turns stronger, the breathing deeper, and when she hears the first solid, steady thump she blinks tears into his shirt. 

“There you are,” she whispers, stroking her thumb along the curve of his heart, feeling it beating steady and full once more. “There you are, dear wolf.” 

She keeps her promise and stays with him until he wakes, listening to every single heartbeat. Treasuring every single heartbeat. He isn’t injured after all, she realizes, only grieving so strongly that it has damaged something physical inside. She’d always thought it fanciful, the stories where a maiden pined away and perished of a broken heart, but she remembers her own anguish when the Rats had been killed and thinks her heart may very well have struggled along for weeks the way Geralt’s had been only hours before.

His heart had broken over her, and she’s overwhelmed by that realization. She knew he loved her, loved her in a way nobody else ever had, but knowing it ran so deep had her mind full. 

She resolved to steady that heart every chance she got. She’d never be the cause of its weakness again. After all, she needed it strong and safe as much as he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, or "Broken heart syndrome" is a real thing that can cause the heart a great deal of distress and even damage when someone under a lot of stress experiences a bad shock. Even someone healthy can fall to this.
> 
> After spending weeks looking for Yennefer and then for Ciri, Geralt was already under a great deal of strain when he had to suffer those moments of thinking Ciri was dead. Severe cardiomyopathy can actually tear the heart wall, but if the patient is calmed down primary care comes in the form of support since it's a mental burden causing the physical damage.
> 
> I'm thinking about writing a second part to this, as broken heart syndrome usually doesn't go away in one treatment. The continued reassurance is usually needed. And let's face it, Geralt is under a lot of stress. Strong as his heart is, he needs it to stay that way.
> 
> EDIT: And there is now a part two at minimum.


	2. Yennefer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Vesimir's death, when the dust finally settles, Geralt can't keep his head up anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So after some prompting and a lot of encouragement from a few individuals I decided to add at least one if not two or three more chapters to this concept of Geralt suffering Takotsubo cardiomyopathy.

They thought he was holding it together so well.

And he was. Because Ciri needed him to. Because she was handling enough guilt and after all he was right--they all knew what they’d signed up for. But when Ciri was asleep and Lambert and Eskel took to drinking and the others fell into exhausted rest, it finally hit him.

Everything. At once. The pain seared through him as he moved aching muscles to lift his breastplate over his head and he gasped, falling to one knee and clenching his hand on the buckles.

“Geralt?!” Yennefer’s voice was alarmed, worried, and she rushed to him.

“I’m--” _fine_ he tried to say but the word was ground between his clenching teeth as another streak of pain drove into his chest like an arrow shaft. He gasped, his pupils drawing into thin slits as he tried to breathe. Yennefer quickly knelt in front of him, hands going to his shoulders, trying to steady him.

“Geralt, you must tell me what’s wrong. Were you injured?” she asked, her violet eyes frantic.

He shook his head, his muscles trembling. “Help--help me get this off. Can’t breathe….”

 She grasped his breastplate and made quick work of the buckles, lifting it away with some feeble help from his trembling hands. As soon as it was free she helped him shed his mail and he finally drew a full breath. He had hoped it would help, but instead a new stab of intense pain stopped his attempt to get up and he fell into her, kneeling on the stone floor and feeling his heart flutter disconcertingly.

 _Am I...dying?_ He wondered. It felt unlike almost anything else he’d ever experienced. No detox, injury, even exhaustion had felt like this. It was like everything was pressing in on him at once, and he couldn’t take it anymore.

“Geralt-- _Geralt_ you must breathe, can you describe what you’re feeling?” Yennefer was asking, her hands pushing at him as she tried to help him sit up enough on his own that she could look at his eyes. He swallowed thickly and shook his head, doing his best to look at her when she cradled his head in one hand and steadied him with the other.

“Chest--” he finally managed. “Hurts--ah!”

He clenched his teeth and doubled up, unconsciously crossing his arms over his chest. Yennefer was not strong enough to keep him upright this time, and instead she helped him control his collapse, easing him to lay on his left side in a pile of wolf furs laying in front of the fire. They’d slept there the night before…..as he drew another ragged breath Geralt wondered if he would die there too.

  
“Alright, easy does it,” Yennefer chided. Her voice was soft and even, and there was not a hint of anger or even fear there. That’s how Geralt knew she was really worried.

“Yennefer,” he managed, breathless, hurting, just able to focus on her in that moment. She caught his hand as he lifted it to cup her cheek, shaking her head as her eyes flared.

“Breathe, Geralt. Do not speak. Shhh,” she soothed, lacing their fingers, bending over him. Fear sparked in her eyes and he heard his name on her lips again as he groaned, pressing his free hand to his chest.

“Yen….” Her name ground between his teeth and she tightened her grip on his hand.

_I_ _’m dying, aren’t I?_

He didn’t mean the thought towards her, but her head whipped around and he knew she’d heard it.

“No, you are most certainly not.”

He lay back in the furs, panting, his entire chest tight. He wanted to believe her, plead with an invisible entity that she was right, but he felt like he was out of fight.

“I can’t….anymore, Yen,” he said finally, head falling back, all his effort pouring its last drops into breathing. “I can’t.”

“Then don’t. You’ve had a terrible shock, you’ve fought yourself into exhaustion--” she shook her head, and her hands stroked over his face, her skin impossibly soft. He closed his eyes and sighed, grimacing in the pain still throbbing between his ribs.

“Yennefer…”

“I told you not to speak, Geralt.” There was that bite he was used to, and his lips twitched into the faintest smile. Maybe it was his imagination, but the pain eased up just a little.

“I’m going to examine you now, just lay still. Get your breath back.”

He hummed, and as her hands stroked across his brow and the warmth of her magic bled into his skin he felt the tension ease up that little bit more.

But only for a moment. In a rush of panic he remembered how much energy she’d already expended and he grabbed her hand, his grip almost hard enough to hurt as his eyes flew open.

“No! Yennefer….” he shook his head, the pain evident in his eyes. “Don’t.”

“Geralt I will not lose you to your own foolishness I--”

“AND I CAN’T LOSE YOU!”

He was sitting up then, braced on one arm, the other hand still clasping her wrist tightly enough to bruise. His chest was heaving, his eyes fever bright.

For several pounding heartbeats they were both silent.

“I can’t...Yennefer….I can’t…” he shook his head, tears brimming as he clenched his jaw and swallowed. Yennefer’s expression fell and his grip gentled on her wrist.

“Geralt, I must know you’re alright…” she said brokenly.

“I’m not--” he said with a choked kind of laugh, but there was no smile this time. “I’m not alright.”

Yennefer’s expression twisted with sympathy and she bowed her head for a moment. “I know.”

She looked at him then, settling on her knees at his side, reaching up to cup his face. He leaned into her touch and she stroked his beard, pressing her other hand to the side of his neck. She stroked his pulse gently, her brow twisted. “You don’t think you’re strong enough to survive this, but you are. You have to be. For Ciri. For me.”

He bowed his head, feeling so tired and yet afraid--afraid if he yeilded he wouldn’t ever wake up again.

“You will.” She said softly, and a chill went across his skin when she bent close and kissed the soft hollow of his throat. Her hands settled on his heart then and a heat flooded him. He drew a startled breath through his teeth and he shot her a warning look but she shook her head and stopped any protest with another kiss.

“Let me help you. You’ve carried all of this yourself too long. I know your heart, Geralt. I’ve known it from the moment I first knew you, and right now it needs to rest.”

He met her eyes, a silent pleading passing into a quiet acceptance as the pain eased and his body finally relaxed. He drew a long, deep breath against her hands, his head bowing and his eyes falling shut.

“There you are, my love. Now, trust me. You can rest. I will watch over you, and you will wake with the morning. I swear it.”

Geralt opened his eyes despite the heavy drowsiness settling into his marrow and leaned forward, kissing her once more before finally laying back. She shifted with him, her hands staying always over his heart, and the pain stayed away.

Gradually, the pounding in his chest slowed to a limping plod, and then eased into the familiar rhythm he was supposed to have. He sighed, and he finally gave in. Trusting her to keep him alive while he slept. 

As promised, Yennefer watched over him until dawn. And at dawn, when he woke, he held her against his healing heart while she slept in its promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *clapping hands* If you're a shipper and you know it grab the tissues. 
> 
> I will see myself out.


End file.
